It wasn’t far out of the way, of course (my apartment
isn’t that big), but just those 20 seconds of extra effort it
took to walk to the closet and pull out the guitar had proved to
be a major deterrent. I had tried to overcome this
barrier with willpower, but after only four days, my reserves
were completely dried up. If I couldn’t use self-control to
ingrain the habit, at least not for an extended period, I now
wondered: What if I could eliminate the amount of
activation energy it took to get started?

Clearly, it was time for another experiment. I took the
guitar out of the closet, bought a $2 guitar stand, and set it up
in the middle of my living room. Nothing had changed except that
now instead of being 20 seconds away, the guitar was in immediate
reach. Three weeks later, I looked up at a habit grid with 21
proud check marks.

What I had done here, essentially, was put the desired
behavior on the path of least resistance, so it actually took
less energy and effort to pick up and practice the guitar than to
avoid it. I like to refer to this as the 20-Second Rule, because
lowering the barrier to change by just 20 seconds was all it took
to help me form a new life habit. In truth, it often
takes more than 20 seconds to make a difference—and sometimes it
can take much less—but the strategy itself is universally
applicable: Lower the activation energy for habits you
want to adopt, and raise it for habits you want to avoid. The
more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our
desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start
positive change.